Weight, apparently.

Did you know that the Monday following a football game, fans of the losing team eat more saturated fats and sugars? So says a study published in Psychology Science, the journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The saturated fat intake of these fans was nearly sixteen percent higher than their normal saturated fat intake. And if the game came down to the wire, the results were even more marked.

On the flip side, the winning team’s fans ate nine percent less saturated fat than usual.

Even more interesting, when non-football fans were included in the mix, the findings still held true. That is, the non-fans’ saturated fat consumption mirrored that of their fan counterparts.

What can you do to counteract the problem?

The researchers suggest that winning provides a boost to one’s self control, but losing is seen more as a threat, so people turn to food in order to cope. They advise fans of the defeated team to write down what is important to them in life to help put things in perspective.